Going out with Canadian troops in Afghanistan's Panjwai district meant witnessing their impressive restraint.

Afghans watch warily as Canadian troops patrol through the narrow streets of Nakhonay, a Taliban stronghold where several Canadians have been killed by improvised explosive device blasts, on Oct. 21, 2010.

Whether I was walking across a Canadian base in Somalia’s Belet Huen in 1993, or in Afghanistan’s Panjwai district 17 years later, the sinking feeling was the same.

In both places, the sand was like powdery talc. My boots sank into it ankle deep, jetting up bursts of grey-brown dust that coated pant legs, cameras and anything else in close range that I was trying to protect from the relentless, insatiable desert.

I imagined walking on the moon, with much more gravity.

Panjwai brought back some bad memories.

Journalists like to accuse generals of always fighting the last war, or seeing each new conflict through old eyes, and applying outdated tactics. Journalists are often guilty of the same mistake.

When I signed up to live with Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan, I expected the worst.

In Somalia, I’d seen how badly things could go wrong.

The Canadian Airborne Regiment’s weak leadership collapsed under the Ogaden Desert’s corrosive force, and soldiers driven up the wall by petty thieves stealing food, radios and other trifles got the go-ahead to bait them with food and water.

The Canadians’ trap killed at least two Somalis: Ahmed Arush, who was shot in the back trying to flee, and 16-year-old Shidane Arone, who was tortured to death in a bunker.

The atrocities, in turn, killed a Canadian regiment that liked to think it was above the rest.

And the spilled Somali blood stained the reputation of an army that had once given life to the notion that soldiers ordered to kill for their country could also be peacekeepers, sent to save lives for the United Nations.

Before Arone’s murder, soldiers had griped to me in the vise-like heat of Belet Huen about how badly they wanted permission to open fire on kids pelting them with rocks.

Finding a real fight was less of a problem in the Taliban’s heartland.

That exacted a heavy toll: 157 Canadian soldiers dead and more than $11 billion spent. But the payoff is incalculable: in the badlands of southern Afghanistan, Canadian combat troops reclaimed their rightful honour.

I was never under fire with Canadians in Kandahar province, yet I couldn’t miss their courage.

I’ve never been much for flag-waving. I’m not big on war either. But I’m not ashamed to admit I got a rush of Canadian pride each time I went out and, weighed down by a heavy flak jacket and helmet, walked in soldiers’ footsteps.

I felt the quiet power of Canadian restraint strongest at a miserable crossroads called Nakhonay, on patrols that passed Afghans who sat silently in shadowed doorways, staring daggers.

It was an insurgent hub, about 20 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city, seized in late 2009 in a joint Afghan-Canadian push.

The Taliban and its allies melted into the population and tried hard to take the town back, lacing the dusty tracks and mud-brick compounds with improvised explosive devices that killed several Canadians.

If lessons hadn’t been learned from Somalia, Nakhonay was the ideal place for the repeat of some nasty mistakes. Too many comrades died there for Canadians not to want some payback.

Yet for the most part they kept their cool while IEDs cut down one soldier after another. Finally, as the death toll mounted, commanders gave locals an ultimatum.

Make sure the high walls lining the narrow roads that the Canadians walked weren’t used as death traps or they would come down.

The blasts didn’t stop, so the Canadians bulldozed a long line of walls, denying fiercely conservative Pashtun families the privacy they constantly insist is a matter of honour.

And then the Canadians paid cash compensation, which didn’t appease many. I could see that in the death stares of young men, elders and even the kids who scattered when the Canadian foot patrols approached.

It wasn’t pretty, but war never is. I doubt the name Nakhonay will ever appear in the annals of great Canadian military victories. But at least our soldiers showed some respect for the rules there.

After nine years in Afghanistan, the most serious allegation against Canadian forces was that they handed over detainees to Afghan authorities, who probably tortured some of them.

Opinion polls showed that most Canadians believed their government knew that the detainees would be, and were, mistreated.

Judging by the ballots cast in the last election, most don’t see Afghans abusing Afghans as a pressing Canadian problem, no matter what the Geneva Conventions say about the proper treatment of prisoners of war.

Now the political heat on Canada’s military is more familiar: demands for cutbacks, and handwringing over whether men and women trained to fight and kill should be sent to war at all.

Once a nation synonymous with peacekeeping, Canada has dropped to 56th place on the list of 114 countries that currently have police or troops deployed on UN missions around the world, according to the world body’s latest figures.

With just 172 Canadians wearing blue helmets and berets, our commitment is dwarfed by today’s peacekeeping leader: Bangladesh. It has sent 10,654, or almost 11 per cent, of the 98,829 UN forces keeping the peace in numerous hotspots.

Almost the same number come from Pakistan, whose military intelligence continues to harbour and support insurgents that killed Canadians in neighboring Afghanistan. Which is to say peacekeeping does not guarantee sainthood.

I don’t doubt that voters and their government, the people who sent Canadian men and women to Afghanistan, tired of the war long before most of the troops did.

Sitting in dusty tents, listening to soldiers bitch about the heat or talk about folks back home as they cleaned their weapons or flipped through dirty magazines, I heard a lot say they wanted to stay and finish the job.

I was surprised by how many talked of re-enlisting. I shouldn’t have been.

It’s the politicians, and the public, that gave up on Afghanistan, where a new generation of fighters proved, once again, that on the battlefield, Canadians can give as good as they get.